LONDON TIME

In 2006 I lived in London for three months, right in the heart of ‘the hip and happening’ Shoreditch. I was there to do an internship with Peter Jensen a Danish designer based in London. Well, I was there to do the internship but maybe even more so to discover the big city, the bars, the clubs, it’s restaurants and it’s shops...My, you can shop in London! And then, as you might have guessed by now, I’m not just talking about the ‘High Street Fashion Shops’ or the ‘High Fashion Chique Shops’ but the endless food departments in Harrods and Harvey Nichols, the posh ecological supermarkets or even the regular Sainsbury made my head swirl!

At the beginning of the three months I was modeling for Peter. I had the perfect size to moulage his dresses on for hours. But after a couple of weeks, without noticing at first, my belly started to expand and I could no longer fit in his pretty clothes (I wasn’t too sad about that as modeling makes your feet hurt and gives you a dizzy head sometimes).

It was true that I had been enjoying myself immensely discovering all kinds of new foods;

I couldn’t resist starting the day with a breakfast of full-fat yoghurt with a dot of lemon curd on top accompanied by a fresh scone. 

Then I usually had lunch with the girls (the other interns at Peters, we were with nine girls on about 20m2(!) excluding Peter himself, his assistent and the patternmaker) which existed of an organic soup or sandwich from Sainsbury with a coke, I never drink Coca Cola but this was the hottest summer I’ve ever survived in my life. Sometimes I even had a  candy bar to load the battery for the second part of the long day.

As soon as I came home from the steaming atelier, I pulled a cold beer from the fridge and hang out with my roommates on the balcony or on the couch smoking a sigarette (a bad habit, which came with living the London life) if it had been a really long day. 

Then if everyone was there we cooked up some pizza from scratch or I made me big plate of pasta with some salad. Just across from my room there opened up an organic shop where I got my veggies and fruit. To end the day we usually agreed to share a bucket of Ben&Jerry’s from the 24/7 shop downstairs...

No wonder I gained a couple of pounds, huh? And I’m not even including the weekends...I’ll tell you another time about that!

My favorite coffeeshop Old shoreditch station

Cheap, but very good vietnamese 'bring your own drinks!

Yumm!

Festa della Castagna

One of the many pretty things about Italy is how the chestnut trees glow in the autumn sun around 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
Last week we were invited to La Festa della Castagna, a feast of fine, or rather bourgeois, food and drinks to celebrate the chestnut, the beginning of winter and the beauty of my friends garden. Now these party's usually take place around october to officially open the chestnut-season, but then there isn't any snow falling yet. And how pretty is a fire cooking up some chestnuts in the white snow!?

We thought we should bring something sweet to the celebration, so we bakes two chocolate cakes. I dusted them with a little 'zucchero al velo' (sugar like a veil) meaning powdered sugar, leaving out the shape of a chestnut leaf. I used Nigella's recipe for 'chocolate cloud cake', super easy to make and always a success.

There was a big table filled with raw and cooked ham, sausages, bread, cheese, fruit, cake and the hot, black chestnuts straight from the fire outside, ready to be peeled. We all had many plates of this goodness accompanied by the same amount of glasses of vin brulee, an Italian version of the German 'Gluhwein'. A spiced red wine with the peel of an orange and lemon, drunk warm (best drunk outside in the snow!)

I remember the smell of this wine from when I was a little girl. My mom still makes it every christmas and it makes the house smell like...christmas. I'm already looking forward to it as I will be spending my holiday in The Netherlands. She makes it from scratch with some good red wine (there are all kinds of prefab wines available these days). She puts in an orange decorated with cloves, although it's not purely for decoration but for the typical taste they give to the wine, it just looks so great. And of course some cinnamon and sugar and I think some lemon peel too. It sits on the stove for a couple of hours, then it's usually christmas-eve and we drink it to keep ourselves warm and cosy. Mmmm, I can't wait!

Getting used to my new life...

I've been living in Como for about a year now and you might say that one would be settled down. But there are times I still have to get used to my new life, the new way of life here in Italy. I never thought it would be so different from the life in Holland, it's not that far away you know.

Maybe it has to with the sudden way I transferred my life from The Netherlands to the Southernlands (even though we're right at the Swiss border). It went something like this....

I just graduated from my master in fashion and was working on a new collection which I was going to show at the Amsterdam Fashion Week. In the mean time I was working on my portfolio to prepare myself for this Com'on week in Como. Where I would participate as a young designer to meet textile companies. So took the plane to Milano, all curious of what was going to happen, on the 11th of October last year...

That's when my new life started...I fell in love or I'd better say in LOVE! with this wonderful Dutch (!) man who had been living here for the past 8 years of his life. At the end of this roller coaster week we knew this was love. I went home and decided I could not NOT go back to find out what this thing was that made me feel like never before, that gave me outrageously excited butterflies in my stomach.

I threw my life upside down and within a week I was back in Como. I organized an internship with a textile company and stayed in a hotel for the next six weeks. I think I spent a few nights there...

My new Love took me everywhere to show me his favorite places, restaurants and his friends. There was so much to see and do. We spent all of our time getting to know each other better, while being extremely in Love. People couldn't stop staring at us as we kissed our way through Como, 'the strange blond couple' who can't seem to get their hands off each other. We still do that, but it's not as bad as those first couple of months.

So, I guess it is a bit of an extraordinary story and a big change in my life. And how bad is it not to be used to so many things...it keeps life a surprise!